Stifled freedom curtailing business innovation

MORE THAN four fifths of employees – 83.7 per cent – say they do not get their best ideas on the job because of time constraints, distractions and stress, according to a study by consultancy iQudo.

Among those who do get their best ideas at work, 48 per cent cite inspiring co-workers as the number one reason for on-the-job creativity, followed by a creative atmosphere at 29 per cent and job-creativity requirements at 28 per cent.
Having time to ponder could only manage fourth place, with only 21 per cent citing it as a reason for their on-the-job creativity.Generational friends
Still in the workplace, Millennials value time spent with coworkers, with 57 per cent reporting that work friendships have a significant impact on boosting happiness, says generations researcher BridgeWorks.
The majority of baby boomers, however, said friendship with colleagues has no effect.Girl power
Almost all women consumers – 92 per cent – consider online reviews extremely or very important when making a purchase, according to branding agency Influence Central.
The figure is up from 85 per cent in 2014.
And the number of consumers who make a purchase online after reading an e-commerce review has jumped from 77 per cent to 84 per cent in the same period.Big spenders
Two thirds of homes sold by construction company Toll Brothers are priced at less than $750,000, although the average is around $1.3m
in California.
One large home-buyer demographic is formed by baby boomers buying a home or second home or a home within an age-qualified community.
And 50 per cent of such buyers pay cash for their home, rather than 20 per cent of the average home buyer.Screen queens
In the USA, there are about 8,000 people per movie screen. In Mexico, by comparison, there ares about 20,000 people per movie screen. And Brazil has 70,000 people per screen, says cinema operator Cinemark.Power senses
Apparently, 74 per cent of Americans rate sight as the most important of their senses and the sense of smell ranks lowest, with only five per cent rating it as most important, according to Shullman Research Center.
The study also concluded that taste and smell – the two senses that together detect flavor – are more important among adults who live in households with incomes of more than $500,000.Dressed up
Suits are hot fashion items for women right now and apparel retailer New York & Company, which has a store at Tanger Outlets in Texas City, will be getting in on the trend by introducing an Eva Mendes-branded suit in February.Wheeled deals
Between 63 and 64 per cent of all used-car sales are made through independent dealers and in private transactions that don’t include structured sales-reporting systems, says satellite-radio broadcaster Sirius XM.
The remaining sales are made through officially licensed dealers. About 50 million used cars are sold each year and most people hold on to their cars for six years, the auto-focused company says.No trace
In five years, the number of grocery chain Kroger’s stores recycling food waste has increased by 73 per cent, from 290 to more than 1,000 this year.
Thirty of the group’s 37 manufacturing plants are sending zero waste to landfills, an increase of nine facilities since 2013.
Taken together, along with a lot of other efforts, Kroger is sending 69 per cent less waste to landfills than it did those few years ago.Sales inklein
Justin Bieber is certainly succeeding as a brand ambassador for luxury-goods purveyor Calvin Klein.
The brand’s market share has grown by nearly 10 per cent in the past year and it now accounts for 30 per cent of all men’s underwear sold in department stores.Cheap Surfers
Houston-based internet service provider Cogent Communications typically sells 10-gigabit systems but is starting to sell 100-gig interfaces to its customers.
And the average price per megabit has fallen from $300 in the market to about $2.
For Cogent, that’s brought the average selling price of a megabit down from an introductory price 14 years ago of $10 to $1, which makes it a lot cheaper to surf the web these days.

Wireless can’t kill the video starPEOPLE ARE still buying the physical videogame cartridge, says California-based Electronic Arts.While 75 per cent of PC games are now downloaded digitally, only around 20 per cent of console games are digital, according to the company. EA’s Peter Moore says: “Obviously physical media is still a very important part of what a lot of gamers like. They like the ability to own a disk. They like the ability to put a disk in a tray and it plays immediately without having download.”The internet – or lack of it – is another factor, he says.“A lot of consumers don’t have the benefit of strong internet bandwidth that can download 25-and 30-gigabyte games,” he said.